


Make Mad the Guilty, and Appall the Free

by GwendolynGrace



Category: Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
Genre: Internal Monologue, M/M, Single POV, Yuletide 2010
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-22
Updated: 2010-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-13 23:18:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GwendolynGrace/pseuds/GwendolynGrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Perhaps if he had thought ahead, if he had even considered that Shears would return, then maybe Clipton would have done something differently - argued more vehemently - taken some action to try to save Nicholson from himself. Perhaps he should have done. But in a way, perhaps it was kinder to let events fall as they did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make Mad the Guilty, and Appall the Free

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Skew](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skew/gifts).



Major Clipton was thirty-six years old when he came with Colonel Nicholson’s battalion across Burma to the camp ruled by the Japanese Colonel Saito. Thirty-six, to Nicholson’s forty-seven, but even he could see that Saito was no match for Nicholson’s quiet determination. Still, he had no idea that Nicholson’s dogged ideals would come to destroy not only Saito, but so much more. He thought Saito would give Nicholson trouble, certainly - but he had not been prepared for the results. Not at all.

He had been Colonel Nicholson’s battalion surgeon for four years already when they had been ordered to surrender in Singapore. At first, he was equally impressed with Nicholson’s dignity and appalled by his snobbery - but nonetheless, compelled to admire the man. That admiration grew as time progressed: Clipton had rarely seen with his own eyes the sort of charisma that kept 200-odd men organised and focused even in horrendous and disheartening conditions. Clipton knew that Nicholson had studied at Winchester and later attended military academy with the Royal Engineers before getting called up to Antwerp in the Great War, had then served in India for over a decade, and had willingly been one of the first to organise the Indian troops in Asia after Gerry marched into Poland. He knew that Colonel Nicholson considered His Majesty’s Army a bastion of order and discipline and kept his battalion running like clockwork no matter what the conditions. Throughout their stay in Singapore, despite fever, gangrene, dysentery and the wounds sustained in battle, Nicholson had expected his men to endure. And he expected his physician to heal them.

Clipton still had nightmares about the forced march from Singapore to Saito’s camp. It had been beyond arduous in its proportions, and when Clipton finally brought the wounded onto the compound, the only thing he wanted to do was collapse in a sweaty, stinking heap. But the camp had its own wounded to assess. Knowing what Nicholson would say if he were not able to report their condition, Clipton pushed himself to learn the men’s ailments and prognoses, as well as ascertain what they had on hand in terms of medicine.

He was actually a little disappointed when Colonel Nicholson arrived for his inspection and he had not quite finished his examinations - particularly the ranking officer, Commander Shears. Whether his decision to work alongside the enlisted men contributed to his physique - or whether his physique had enabled him to survive the gruelling work details - Colonel Nicholson clearly disapproved of Shears. He believed Shears insane. And Shears returned the favour. Clipton knew better. He understood Nicholson’s impatience with the American, as well.

‘Have you examined him?’ Colonel Nicholson asked, correctly guessing as Clipton had that there was nothing more wrong with Shears than the same things they all needed: food, rest, adequate water and a modicum of self-respect. But that was not the entire reason. Clipton fought a smile: even in this most hideous of places, Nicholson could be provoking. Did he want him to say yes or no?

‘Just about to, sir,’ he answered, and promptly invited Shears to finish shaving later. _Is this what you want to see?_ he wondered as he placed his hands on the well-muscled chest. _Or will this ‘exam’ flare up your jealousy like the burst of a machine gun as it fired?_ Nicholson liked to pretend that he was not jealous, or possessive, of his battalion’s doctor. Clipton liked to pretend that he didn’t want Nicholson to care.

It was Clipton who had first cause to be jealous, however. Nicholson immediately offered Shears a place among the officers. Clipton told himself it was mere courtesy - easy to do with Nicholson, because he was such a stickler for observing the formalities. And anyone could see that Shears was not going to take easily to bit and bridle. Yet Nicholson persisted, treated him with care and calm. They conversed easily about Saito and the conditions in the camp and Clipton could tell from just the few words they exchanged that Colonel Nicholson had already made up his mind about a good many things. Including (to his relief) Commander Shears.

For moments after Clipton turned his medical attention to the young commander, Nicholson grew sharp and found a quick excuse to leave them. _Jealousy, then_ , Clipton concluded. Or a reason to make himself feel jealous.

Evidently, Nicholson thought better of himself - or of Clipton - a moment later. He turned back to his medical officer. ‘There’s an officers’ meeting at seven o’clock; give me a list of your requirements.’ To anyone else, it would have been a perfunctory and proper overture. Clipton knew there was more to it.

He answered in distraction, but understanding that Nicholson meant to apologise for - well, for everything. Knowing the Colonel as Clipton did, he wasn’t surprised at all to find that Shears already thought him over his head. He’d soon see differently, Clipton thought.

He wasn’t at the officers’ meeting, of course - he had a right to be, but he had too much to take care of in the infirmary - but later in the hut they shared with the others, he and Nicholson talked it over a bit. It was of the utmost importance to Nicholson that he lead the men by the best interpretation he could make of their final orders. And it was of even more importance to him that they retain their sense of duty, of dignity, of discipline and of identity as soldiers and more to the point as subjects of His Royal Majesty. Nicholson wore his nationality like a sovereign chain of office. It circled him even when he had nothing else to show for his service. And, Clipton thought then, it protected him. It gave him an aura of impervious defence that defied any attempt to rob him of his stalwart pride.

Clipton loved him for that.

The following morning he was still busy with his charges and didn’t overhear the initial argument between Nicholson and Saito until it was well underway. Clipton knew Saito expected the officers to work alongside the men; he had guessed immediately that Nicholson would not bend to the insult, but he never dreamed that the two would clash so completely over it.

Before Clipton knew what was happening, Saito had snatched away Nicholson’s copy of the Geneva Conventions and struck the old man with it. Only Nicholson’s iron resolve kept the men from rioting on the spot. Saito tried to shame Nicholson, not realising the depth of the Colonel’s confidence. Despite Saito’s efforts, the men responded not to his guards but to Nicholson’s calm orders. The men filed out, leaving only the handful of officers, the sick, and Clipton.

But Clipton really became concerned when the truck pulled up with its gun mounted in back. He asked Shears what Saito’s intentions were. He’d expected a confrontation, but not so soon. And not with such finality. He recognised Nicholson’s strategy but it would do them no good if Saito gave Clipton’s Colonel no time to wear him down. When Shears assured him of Saito’s sincerity, he found himself at a run. He didn’t realise he had moved until he was standing by Nicholson’s side. He took a cuff from a Japanese officer and didn’t notice until later, when he glimpsed the bruise forming in the infirmary mirror.

He had no idea what he’d said to make Saito back down, but it didn’t matter. Nicholson was alive.

Nicholson kept them standing on the parade ground all day. Clipton knew Nicholson could stand there by sheer willpower alone, but he wanted to curse when one of the men - Forsythe - collapsed. Still, the sun reached its zenith and sank again, the men returned, and Nicholson had not flinched once. He had no idea - Nicholson would never tell him - what Saito said to him, but his next view of Nicholson was from across the compound, as the Japanese walked him to the sweatbox - the ‘oven’ as Shears called it.

Shears escaped that night. The guards assured them that all the men who attempted escape had died trying, even showed them the bodies of two of them, but secretly, Clipton always hoped - no, knew - that Shears had made it. The man was simply too contrary to die in such a fashion. But alive or dead, it didn’t matter. Had Nicholson not been confined, Clipton would have been glad to see Shears go, glad to know that his unique bond with Nicholson would not be shaken by the American with the insubordinate attitude. As it was, his desertion only left Clipton utterly alone with the horror of his commander’s torture.

It took three days to get in to Saito about Nicholson. And then the man wanted only to berate him for the escape attempt. Clipton thought of Nicholson, of how he would have faced Saito’s irrational behaviour, and assumed as logical a manner as he could. In Nicholson’s absence, he had no choice but to act as his representative, his advocate. But then Saito tried to make him _his_ go-between, to plead with a man whose idols were the regulation books and His Majesty’s Officer’s Code. No matter. He had no choice. Besides, it gave him a glimpse of Nicholson, the chance to tend to him and to give him the bad news about Jennings and (so he thought) Shears. He knew they were being watched - didn’t dare make any more than professional contact - but he felt he had to use his limited time to try to convince Nicholson to bend - not only for his own sake, but for the men’s, the only argument he thought might have a chance to change Nicholson’s mind. Certainly, telling him what life would be like without him would never have worked.

Too soon, time was up, and Nicholson remained as resolved as ever. Clipton promised more visits, more food, told him about having bribed the guard (though with _what_ , he didn’t bother to explain. Nicholson did not need to know what sacrifices Corporal Carstairs was willing to make for the old man). His hand hovered over Nicholson’s brow for a moment - just a moment too long - but he pulled himself away. Saito was watching.

He stepped away from the tiny box and surveyed the other officers in their slightly roomier, but no more humane cells. He wanted to kill Nicholson himself for putting him in this position - but while he could try on his own to convince the man, it wasn’t in him to disobey. He straightened his spine and went to face Saito.

‘It’s like this: Colonel Nicholson won’t give in to force. It’s a matter of principle. As Medical Officer, I must protest at the way he’s being treated,’ he added quickly, turning Saito’s diversionary tactic back on him and steering himself back onto familiar, morally comfortable ground in the process. ‘It’s a wonder he’s still alive. Should a tragedy occur, it would be tantamount to murder.’ It was as close to a threat as he could manage - as close as he would let himself come to declaring his outrage at Saito and his fears for a man he had come to think of as his companion.

‘Are they both mad?’ he asked Saito’s second-in-command moments later. ‘Or am I going mad? Or is it the sun?’

He couldn’t quite decide what he wanted the answer to be.

For days it went on. The men did their best to keep the work slow and unsuccessful - just enough to keep from being overly punished - but Nicholson remained in the oven. His men continued to carry out His Majesty’s discipline over the Emperor’s. Colonel Saito even tried a different tactic: Blaming his own Lieutenant and distributing Red Cross packages as a bribe. The men saw through the ruse easily. Still Nicholson remained in the oven.

The following night, Saito sent for Nicholson. Oh, Clipton should have loved to be a fly on the wall during that meeting! He was sure Nicholson maintained the better of the conversation, even starved and parched and beaten as he was by that time. Will of steel, the man had. He wore the Colonel down by sheer obstinacy. He heard afterward - heard from Nicholson’s own lips (between the furtive and gentle embraces of their hushed reunion) how Saito twisted before him. How Nicholson knew from the moment Saito asked him to sit that he would be able to use Saito’s desperation against him. ‘From that moment, my dear, it was only a matter of time,’ he confided.

And Nicholson had the will to keep himself alive long enough to make Saito bend to him - his prisoner!

Clipton admired him for that, all right. But he found the thought not a little frightening, too.

For when Saito capitulated, when he finally released Nicholson - that’s when it should have stopped. That’s when Nicholson had him right where he wanted him, and where he should have recalled their primary mission. But it was after that day that Clipton slowly began to realise that he would never quite get the man back who went into that oven. He would never quite be given custody again of the magnificent soldier he had known. Oh, part of Nicholson had gained as great a victory as any Wellington or Nelson. But the other part, the part that had become obsessed with the bridge and its significance, the part that had seized on the project as the key to keeping his men engaged - that part had toppled into the abyss.

Of course, Clipton didn’t know that for sure until much later. He had hints - even moments when he made up his mind to protest - but he never could bring himself to call Nicholson a madman to his face. Not his ‘Nick.’ He didn’t realise how far _his_ Nicholson had travelled until the day Shears returned. Until the day the American tried to blow up the bridge. Before that day, though, he had had to endure weeks of helplessness while his Colonel led them all, step by step, into the jungles of his own insanity.

It was amazing how quickly Nicholson’s delusion took hold of the rest of the men. It was down to Nicholson’s damnable charisma, Clipton was sure. That and - Nicholson was right about this - the fact that the bridge did give them a direction for their morale, and every day a victory over the Japanese. When Nicholson explained it, out walking along the river, or during the cool hours of the early morning after the others in their hut had dropped off to sleep and no one was left to notice two men sharing a blanket, it all sounded perfectly rational. Keep them occupied, keep them disciplined. But when Clipton thought about it separate from Nicholson...it made no sense. Seen from the bigger picture of the war effort, Nicholson’s entire strategy could help their captors more than themselves.

But it was useless to tell Nicholson that. The same stubborn certitude that had carried Nicholson straight through his ordeal in the hotbox made him intractable on the subject of what was best for the men.

‘I hope the Japanese appreciate what we’re doing for them,’ Clipton boldly mentioned to Nicholson as they all walked away from that first meeting - a meeting that Nicholson had obviously controlled and directed from the start, and which made Clipton’s stomach turn the more he heard about the plans to make a bridge that would actually stand. He meant it as a warning, though he could not bring himself to question Nicholson in front of Reeves, Hughes and the others.

‘At the moment, I am not concerned with their appreciation,” Nicholson said serenely. ‘Goodnight, Clipton,’ he continued, in the tone that said they would revisit the topic later.

‘We are proving our superiority with every administrative decision, my dear,’ he told Clipton with assurances.

It was completely unfair, Clipton thought, the way Nicholson could make it sound so reasonable.

‘What do you think?’ Nicholson asked some time later. Clipton knew what he meant, what Nicholson wanted to hear, but his misgivings had been growing again, ever since the last time Nicholson had silenced them in their bed.

‘Sir? Are you convinced that building this bridge is a good idea?’ he asked, hoping to ease into the argument he was sure was about to commence, but equally hoping that perhaps, this once, Nicholson would come to his senses.

Predictably, Nicholson cited every advantage the bridge construction and his masterful manipulation of Saito had brought about, and none of the flaws in his plan.

‘Honestly, Clipton, there are times when I don’t understand you at all,’ Nicholson gibed.

 _Well,_ that _was unnecessary_ , Clipton thought, hurt by the casual insult. Had the moon been high over their heads, and the crickets chirping slowly outside the hut, perhaps Clipton would not have had the strength to press his point. But the sun was ascendant and with its clear light to guide him, Clipton felt more sane than he had for days.

‘I’ll try to make myself clear, sir,’ he said, but he was unable to meet Nicholson’s eye. ‘The fact is, what we’re doing could be construed as - forgive me, sir - collaboration with the enemy.’ He spit it out, finding the gumption to look up. ‘Perhaps even as treasonable activity!’

Nicholson expressed his incredulity and pointed out that they were prisoners who had to work as appointed to them.

‘I understand, sir, but...must we work so _well_?’

Nicholson shot back a comparison of Clipton’s sworn oath as a physician, and once again plunged into the rhetoric of his office. _Ah,_ Clipton thought, _he is so comfortable on his solid ground of a soldier’s duty and his own blessed order!_ And then another thought, less welcome: The bridge was not only holding the men’s morale together, but Nicholson’s very soul. The bridge had become Nicholson’s symbol that he was unbroken.

It was as close to a quarrel as they had ever had. Clipton couldn’t bear Nicholson’s disdain. He wished he could prove to Nicholson that he was his own symbol of towering spirit. Still, he swore to hold his tongue on the subject and put it to better uses.

That oath lasted about as long as it took for Nicholson to clear out Clipton’s infirmary to finish his damn bridge. He watched in mute fury as Nicholson single-handedly convinced more than half the men on sick call to put themselves back to work. How could they refuse? Clipton found the whole episode distasteful in the extreme. Nicholson had told his younger officer he had much to learn about the army - well, if that were so, Clipton decided then and there, he did not care to know.

He had often before wondered what would become of him and Nicholson after the war. Not that he had ever really imagined theirs would be a connection to last if they ever were rescued and restored to civilsation. Still. A man could dream. That day, he knew, the dream would never come to pass. He kept to his own bunk or kipped in the infirmary, claiming the need to be near his patients. He even went so far as to hold himself apart from all the celebrations, the inspections, and most importantly, the arrival of the train that would have inaugurated the bridge. He regretted the necessity, especially when it came at the cost of yet another cutting remark from Nicholson, albeit delivered in the same cool tones he always used. But it was the only tangible protest he could think to lodge.

Perhaps if he had thought ahead, if he had even considered that Shears would return, then maybe Clipton would have done something differently - argued more vehemently - taken some action to try to save Nicholson from himself. Perhaps he should have done. But in a way, perhaps it was kinder to let events fall as they did. The bridge destroyed, Saito dead, the Japanese effort utterly disappointed and Nicholson - Nicholson lost in an agonising but oddly poetic moment. The bridge was Nicholson, in its way, and Nicholson was the bridge - proud, defiant, stalwart - but ultimately doomed. He took its life even as his own ended - and in so doing, perhaps, atoned for his descent to madness.

Years later, Clipton made the ridiculously difficult journey to the spot where it had all happened. His wife was gone then, and in all the intervening time, he had never told her much of anything about the Kwai or the camp or Colonel Saito, and only the barest of facts about Old Nick, as the men had called him. His Nick, he used to think.

He followed his guide down the slope to the river bed. Even now, the water was still brown with mud and brackish, low at this time of year before the rains swelled it. A new bridge had been built on the same spot, but some of the pilons Hughes had sunk into the ground still stuck up from the surface.

Clipton took out a knife and waded with it to the nearest pilon. ‘I used to think you were mad, you know,’ he said to the memory of his lost comrade. ‘But now, I think I understand. The bridge kept you alive. It made you proud. It taught me more than I wanted to know about the human spirit - about how you clung to it, when you should have clung to...other things.’ He chipped away at the stump while he delivered his eulogy.

‘I can’t really imagine how you would have explained it to anyone, why you let the bridge be built. Or why you made it better than the Japanese would have done themselves. But...I’m glad you were the one to push the plunger, my dear. For I think, eventually, when the war ended, you would have seen your folly, seen it standing as a testament to your madness. And I don’t know if you would have forgiven yourself.

‘But I’ve come back, Nick. To tell you: I do understand. And I forgive you. But I wish - I wish it could have been different. I wish you could have seen that you didn’t need this structure to represent your victory. You had the men. You had me. I had you. Your answer to adversity was flawed, my dear. But so are we all.’

He wiped the shavings off the stump, and tears out of his eyes. The four initials remained, carved into the wood as the only monument to Nicholson and his indomitable resolve. In spite of everything, Clipton still missed his friend.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my indispensable beta for her swift and unquestioning willingness to plunge into the fray for me! Love ya like grapes!
> 
> Skew, I hope this is what you were looking for. It's a little more seeing the movie through Clipton's eyes and a little less active than I wanted, but it was something of a rush job as it was a pinch hit. But thank you for prompting me to re-watch the film with this perspective!


End file.
